Battle of the Bulge veteran to be awarded Bronze Star, 68 years later

View full sizeTim Farrell/The Star-LedgerJohn Viglianti, a Westfield resident and WWII vet, 97, is to be honored with the Bronze Star for his service in the Battle of the Bulge. He was supposed to receive the medal when he returned home from the war but an administrative error prevented it until now. He still fits into his Army jacket.

SCOTCH PLAINS — A foot of ice and snow blanketed the unmarked roads from Luxembourg to France. The flakes fell steadily, forming a white curtain that prevented Army Sgt. Ennio John Viglianti from seeing more than two feet ahead.

Sleep-deprived and hungry, Viglianti led seven ammunition trucks through blackness, guided only by the amorphous outlines of trees along the road, distant red taillights and steely resolve.

"I’d never seen a map of the area," Viglianti said. "We were driving blind, but we kept going."

It was Dec. 18, 1944, two days after the Germans launched a surprise attack in Belgium, beginning the Battle of the Bulge. Viglianti was the ammunition chief of the 3rd Armored Field Artillery Battalion 9th Armored Division, tasked with delivering ammunition, personnel and kitchen equipment to Waldbillig and Savelborn, Luxembourg.

He made the 150-mile round trip to the ammunition battery continuously for six days, often under shell fire, to arm the men in the field. They fired a round every forty seconds, day and night, and never ran out of ammunition.

For his bravery, Viglianti, was slated to receive the Bronze Star. But an administrative error prolonged the honor for six decades.

Today, Viglianti will finally get his Bronze Star at age 97 at a ceremony in Scotch Plains.

"I didn’t know I was supposed to get it until my sister-in-law showed me a newspaper clipping," said Viglianti, holding the yellowed Westfield Leader article dated April 1945. It quotes his commanding officer, Col. George Ruhlen, who said "... the energetic and untiring devotion to duty of Sgt. Viglianti exemplifies the highest tradition of the service."

But Viglianti didn’t make much fuss over the award, or lack of it, when he returned to Elizabeth in October 1945. Then 31, he was eager to start a life with his new wife, Mary, and had just started working at her father’s butcher shop.

It took 68 years and a good friend and golfing buddy to put things in motion two years ago.

Art Lundgren, a retired school principal in Berkeley Heights, golfs with Viglianti at Ash Brook Golf Course in Scotch Plains once a week.

"I said, ‘You were supposed to get that, it should be yours,’ " Lundgren, 71, said.

View full sizeTim Farrell/The Star-LedgerJohn Viglianti, left, a Westfield resident and WWII vet, 97, is to be honored with the Bronze Star for his service in the Battle of the Bulge. He was supposed to receive the medal when he returned home from the war but an administrative error prevented it until now. His friend Al Lundgren, right, helped navigate through the paperwork to get his medal.

The road to getting the award sometimes felt as challenging as the one Viglianti took between Luxembourg and France, Lundgren jokes. First Lundgren attempted to obtain the original order but learned all Army personnel records from 1912 to 1959 had burned in a fire in the 1970s.

He contacted the Army Review Agency, where he was told that without the order, the process could take more than a year. The agency suggested a recommendation from an immediate superior officer might expedite the process.

"This was 1944," Lundgren said. "I’d found that most of them were deceased."

As if on cue, Ret. Col. Bob Rupp contacted Viglianti, inviting him to a reunion of the battalion. Rupp, 93, was Viglianti’s commanding officer during the war and agreed to write the letter.

"None of our 18 guns went without ammunition during the six days for which Sgt. Viglianti is cited," said Rupp, himself a Bronze Star recipient. "Actually, the 3rd held what turned out to be the South shoulder of the Bulge for 10 days."

In his letter, Rupp recalled the perilous trips: "Drivers ate while the trucks were being loaded, unless they had to load themselves. Sleep was snatched on the march. No one ever knew if the gun batteries would be in the same place when they made their return trip — or even if the roads would still be in friendly hands."

Viglianti is not one to boast about those six days. He’ll tell stories of sleeping with cows for warmth and recount close calls with enemy bomb craters and overturned trucks. He’ll say he was lucky to avoid combat up until the Bulge and credit both his geographic photographic memory and faith with helping him navigate the blackout conditions.

The eucharistic minister at St. Joseph the Carpenter Catholic Church in Roselle, Viglianti said he once took his men to church in a small town in France.
"A little praying can’t hurt," he recalled telling them.

Today he will receive his long-awaited award in the presence of his wife, three sons, 10 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and friends at the Scotch Plains American Legion Post 209 Hall. Seventy members of the 3rd earned Bronze Stars during WWII, according to Rupp. Viglianti will make it 71.

Viglianti said he received the letter about his forthcoming award on a quiet afternoon last month. He recalled his reaction with a grin.